From Gaza to the NDIS: Labor Is Bringing Home Systems Tested on Palestinians

Summary

1. Palantir Technologies openly supports Israel’s war efforts and works with military, intelligence and immigration authorities.
2. Government institutions and corporations associated with that violence are now being normalised inside Australia.
3. The Michael West Media investigation reveals documented engagement between Palantir and the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA).
4. The possible insertion of this ecosystem into the NDIS means the consequences may now reach disabled Australians in their homes.
5. What governments permit against marginalised people abroad eventually reshapes what they consider acceptable at home.
6. This is why Gaza has always been an Australian political issue and why Labor must face political consequences.

Palantir Technologies

The corporations that service war, surveillance, military operations and mass deportation are being welcomed into the institutions Australians depend upon in their daily lives. According to a disturbing Michael West Media investigation, that reach may extend into the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

The investigation by Claudia Weisenberger reveals extensive, previously undisclosed engagement between the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) and Palantir Technologies, a United States data company that publicly entered a strategic partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Defence to support Israel’s war effort, which has killed, displaced and maimed Palestinians on a massive scale, resulting in multiple significant bodies declaring it a genocide and plausible genocide in the case of the ICJ.

Freedom of Information documents reveal discussions about fraud detection, demonstrations of Palantir’s platform, security and architecture sessions, SAP integration and a proposed proof of concept.

Disabled Australians would not be the first test subjects. Palestinians in Gaza already were. Gaza became a testing ground for mass surveillance, AI-assisted targeting and automated military killing, with Palestinians bearing the deadly consequences. Palantir publicly committed its technology to supporting Israel’s war effort. Labor knew this history and still allowed the company to be considered for systems touching the lives of disabled Australians. The moral failure is Labor’s willingness to import into Australian public life an architecture already tested upon Palestinians.

The violence does not remain overseas

The available documents do not yet prove that Palantir operates the NDIS automated decision system. They do prove that the NDIA entertained the company’s technology, held extended discussions, examined its architecture and considered applications related to fraud detection.

Labor cannot claim that the companies servicing war and coercion overseas have no relevance to Australian public life while its own agencies consider placing their technology inside essential civilian institutions. The enabling of Israel to turn Gaza into rubble is consequential to what is now taking place inside Australian institutions.

From the battlefield to the welfare system

The central function of technology developed for military, intelligence and surveillance does not lose its purpose merely because it entered a civilian setting. It combines enormous amounts of information, identifies patterns, assigns risk, flags individuals, and enables authorities to act against them at scale. Inside the NDIS, this power would be directed at disabled Australians seeking the basic supports necessary to live with dignity. But were Palestinians subjected to mass surveillance and automated targeted killing not also civilians, including children, families and people with disabilities? Were they any less entitled to dignity, safety and due process? The moral objection cannot begin only when this architecture reaches Australia. Its danger lies in reducing human beings to data points and enabling institutions to act against them from a distance, whether in Gaza or Australia.

Labor’s political and corporate ecosystem

There is another question Labor cannot avoid. Palantir Australia is led by former Labor MP and former Defence Materiel Minister Mike Kelly. The FOI documents show Kelly personally inviting senior officials to a demonstration of Palantir’s capabilities following months of engagement concerning fraud-detection workflows. That does not prove misconduct. It does, however, make complete transparency essential.

When a corporation headed by a former Labor minister engages with a Commonwealth agency under a Labor government, the public is entitled to know what was discussed, who authorised it, whether any technology was tested and what procurement decisions followed. Commercial confidentiality cannot be permitted to conceal decisions affecting the personal information and essential supports of disabled Australians. Labor cannot demand transparency from ordinary citizens while offering secrecy to corporations with political access.

What Labor must do

The Muslim Vote calls upon the Labor government to:

• Rule out any present or future Palantir role within the NDIS and terminate any existing engagement, procurement process, trial or proof of concept involving the company.
• Commit that corporations involved in military operations, mass surveillance, forced deportations or grave human-rights abuses will not be entrusted with the sensitive information of Australians or embedded within essential public services.
• Disclose every meeting between Palantir, the NDIA and ministers or ministerial staff.
• Release the full purpose, scope and findings of the Palantir proof of concept.
• Confirm whether any real, test, synthetic or de-identified NDIS data was processed.
• Identify every company involved in building or operating the NDIS automated decision-making infrastructure.
• Identify every agency through which NDIS participant information may be processed or analysed.
• Publish all privacy, human-rights and algorithmic impact assessments.
• Disclose all political lobbying, parliamentary access and former-government relationships connected to the proposed procurement.
• Guarantee meaningful human reconsideration and accessible appeal rights whenever automated action adversely affects a participant.

What is enabled abroad returns home

The significance of the Michael West Media investigation extends beyond Palantir and beyond the NDIS. It exposes the consequences of a government that has progressively surrendered its ethical boundaries.

Labor first accepted the machinery of devastation when it was directed at Palestinians. It defended the alliances, relationships and institutions surrounding that machinery. Now, corporations connected to that destruction are being considered for roles within the everyday structures of Australian life.

The lesson is not simply that technology can be misused. It is that what a government permits against vulnerable people elsewhere eventually influences what it is prepared to impose upon vulnerable people here. Gaza was never separate from Australian politics. The values abandoned there are now returning home.